Heidi Hartmann - The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive
Union (1979)
● Marxism, though insightful regarding the laws of historical development, is sex-blind
● Feminism reveals the systemic character of relations between men and women, but has
been blind to history and insufficiently materialist
○ We need an appropriate synthesis of the two, not a relationship in which
Marxism is dominant
Marxism and the Woman Question
● Marxist analysis explore the relationship of women to the economic system, rather than
the relationship of women to men, assuming that the latter will be explained by the former
● Why does theorists’ Marxism so dominate their feminism?
○ partly because Marxism has such explanatory power over so many
aspects of capitalist society - the structure of production; the generations of a particular
occupational structure, the nature of the dominant ideology
■ but although Marxism can explain the existence of
positions in capitalist society, it cannot explain who will fill them (e.g.
men/women)
Radical Feminism and Patriarchy
● Women’s discontent is a response to a social structure in which women are systematically
dominated, exploited, and oppressed
○ women have an inferior position in the labour market, the emotional
structure of marriage is male-centred, women’s psyche is understood as neurotic
● According to radical feminists, male character traits are the search for power and
domination, egocentricity, individualism, competitiveness and pragmatism
○ females are nurturing, artistic and philosophical
■ the fact that this has not been true of all history shows
that feminism is blind to history
● in spite of this, patriarchy is incredibly
resilient and has dominated in one form or another form most human
history
Towards a Definition of Patriarchy
● Patriarchy is a set of social relations with a material base which, although hierarchical,
creates an interdependence/solidarity among men that enables them to dominate women
○ hierarchies work through those at the top buying off those below with
power e.g. in patriarchy men are bought off with control over women
● The material base of patriarchy is men’s control over women’s labour power
○ this is achieved by the exclusion of women from access to production
resources (e.g. good wages) and restricting women’s sexuality
■ these can both be achieved through monogamous
heterosexual marriage
○ women are controlled, exploited, dominated both ‘personally’ (i.e. in the
family setting) and ‘publicly’ (i.e. in employment)
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